A fast-moving Northern California wildfire has forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate, with residents fleeing through flames and leaving their cars to take cover in nearby stores.
The Camp Fire started Thursday morning near Paradise, a town of around 27,000 some 90 miles north of Sacramento. The entire town has been evacuated, with traffic backing up throughout the area as residents try to get to safety.
When Nate Rodriguez of Paradise woke up Thursday morning he thought the red glow in the sky was the sunrise. He was wrong. It was the flush of the Camp Fire around the town that made him panic: "I was waving down people just anyone on the road just help me because i didn't have a car or nothing."
He and two pitbulls ended up making it to safety.
On Thursday afternoon, California fire officials say the fire had expanded to about 18,000 acres, but its true size is difficult to pinpoint because of heavy smoke, which can be seen from miles away. Dry, windy conditions are making it difficult to contain the fire.
"When this fire started this morning wind speeds were 35 to 40 mph gusts," Cal Fire spokesperson Lynne Tolmachoff said. "Once it got going it picked up very rapidly."
Crews and firefighting aircraft are responding from all over Northern California. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
The California Highway Patrol shut down Highway 99, a major north-south thoroughfare, advising people to avoid the area.
The Adventist Health Feather River Hospital in Paradise evacuated all its patients and staff, given its close proximity to the fire, and transported them safely to hospitals in neighboring towns, Jill Kinney, an Adventist Health spokeswoman told the Associated Press. She said she did not know the exact number of people evacuated.
The fire is the latest in a string of disastrous wildfires that have burned in California over the past year.
Last year the Tubbs Fire in nearby Napa and Sonoma counties killed 22 people. Paradise itself is around 70 miles south of Redding, where the Carr Fire killed eight people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes in July.
Pacific Gas & Electric, the state's largest utility, announced Tuesday it might preemptively cut power to eight California counties starting Thursday morning to prevent a possible wildfire, including Butte County where the Camp Fire is located.
PG&E equipment was identified as a cause in some of the deadly fires that swept through the region last October. The utility cut power to 42,000 customers in October during similar dry, windy conditions.
woke up "in" morning he thought the red glow in the sky was the sunrise.
This happened to me once. I got to La Jolla, CA, across the road from Torrey Pines Golf Course, parked in our eastern facing parking lot a top a bluff with a great view of the county below. From this vantage point, I could see 3 huge plumes of smoke rising into the sky, 40ish miles away.
Within a couple hours, the ash in the air started alarming our air handling system. ---
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